Culture: The Cure @ Madison Square Garden, New York

(Drivebycuriosity) - Finally. I got to see "The Cure" live. Last Monday my wife and I attended their gig in New York`s Madison Square Garden. I have been loving their songs since the late 1970s and amassed about 10 albums (including some live recordings & singles collections).

The huge hall (capacity 20,000) was sold out. The concert lasted almost 3 hours and contained 32 songs from 4 decades (here the setlist  setlist ) - quite an experience.

During the early 1980s, the band's increasingly dark and tormented music was a staple of the emerging gothic rock genre, reports Wikipedia ( wikipedia). And even much later albums like "Bloodflowers" (2000) & "The Cure" (2004) had some dark and raucous pieces.

But bandleader Robert Smith presented a different "Cure", maybe because last Monday also was the begin of the summer (even that they performed the song "End of Summer").  We observed  a very buoyant & cheerful program, certainly catering the assembled crowd. Temporarily Smith converted the Madison Square Garden into a dance hall. Though I missed the dark songs from the defining albums "Seventeen seconds" and "Faith" and some of the younger noisy pieces, his "Lullaby " and a lot of other songs comforted me fully. On Smith´s iconic voice combined with a perfect band was pure bliss.  On balance it was a great concert.

Unfortunately I wasn´t able to get good pictures of Robert Smith & Co. but the camera - iPhone 6s plus - captured at least the awesome light show.

Thanks a lot Robert Smith and band!